Hungry for fall? Feast your eyes

The next three weeks bring wall-to-wall coverage leading up to the season

Summer League basketball, American Legion baseball, the Montgomery County Swim League  all have come and gone. Luckily, the hunger pangs won't last long.

Public schools go back to work Saturday, the first official day of offseason workouts. Twenty days later, the fall season kicks off with a full menu of football games.

In the meantime, The Gazette serves up a few appetizers.

Beginning later this week, look for our online series "Walkthroughs," available only at www.gazette.net/montsports.

Our staff will visit all 30 of Montgomery County's varsity football programs in person over the coming days. We'll come back with storylines, analysis and photos from every training camp, all for our massive Fall Sports Special.

You'll have to wait until Sept. 1 to devour the entrée. But in the meantime, "Walkthroughs" whets your appetites. Every time one of us visits a training camp, you'll get first impressions that day, straight out of the reporter's notebook. That means as many as four or five "Walkthroughs" every day next week.

Also online, Anthony Castellano of our photography staff is cooking up a video tour of two-a-day football practices. Coach and player interviews add spice to our look at this revered rite of late summer.

In print, the next three Wednesday issues set the table for our fall coverage, as well.

On Aug. 18, Page D-2 will feature final statistics and standings for summer leagues like MCSL, the Montgomery Division of Legion baseball, the Ripken League and the United Soccer Leagues Second Division. Our official send-off to the summer will also include visuals from Saturday's first day of fall practice around the county.

The annual college football blowout comes next, on Aug. 25.

As usual, we'll map the location of every Montgomery County product on an NCAA Division I football roster on Page D-2. We'll also highlight some players from your neighborhood whose names you will hear called on Saturdays this season.

We serve up the piece de resistance Wednesday, Sept. 1: The Gazette's first-ever Fall Sports Special. On the eve of the season, we provide the most comprehensive, up-to-date previews for nine Montgomery County fall varsity sports.

In it will be 14 pages devoted to nothing but high school sports. The Sports Roundup page debuts with last year's final standings and preseason Guru Grades. The first Pigskin Page of the season will reveal our preseason Top 10 and first Football Forecasters.

We'll preview field hockey, golf, boys and girls soccer and cross country and girls tennis and volleyball, including outlooks straight from the coaches' mouths.

For football, our staff will handicap the field and tell you who we think will still be standing in late November. On top of that is a new-look, quarter-page preview morsel for every team in the county, cooked up from our camp visits.

It's an exciting new feature of The Gazette's fall coverage, and the perfect way to slake the thirst of a long, dry summer.